The master race (German: die Herrenrasse, das Herrenvolk(help·info)) is a concept in Nazi ideology in which the Nordic race—a branch of what in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century taxonomy was called the Aryan race—represented an ideal and pure whiterace. In Nazi ideology, the Nordic race was the purest example of the original racial stock of those who were then called the Proto-Aryans,[1] whom the Nazis believed to have prehistorically dwelt on the North German Plain and to have ultimately originated from the lost continent of Atlantis.[2] The Nazis declared that the Nordics (now referred to as the Germanic peoples), were the true Aryans (ethnically closest descendants of the Proto-Indo-Europeans) because they were much less racially mixed with peoples who were "non-native" to the European continent, than other Indo-European peoples, such as the Slavic peoples, the Romanic peoples, and the Indo-Iranian peoples. Based on this claim that the Nordic peoples were superior to all other races, the Nazis believed they were entitled to expand territorially.[3] This concept is known as Nordicism. The actual policy that was implemented by the Nazis resulted in the Aryan certificate, the one form of the official document that was required by the law for all citizens of the Reich was the "Lesser Aryan certificate" (Kleiner Ariernachweis) which could be obtained through an Ahnenpass which required the owner to trace their lineage through baptism or birth certificates or certified proof thereof that all grandparents were of "Aryan descent".

Along with the Jews and Gypsies, the overwhelming majority of the Slavic population were defined as non-Aryan Untermenschen, and a danger to the "Aryan" or Germanic Übermenschen master race.[4] According to the Nazi secret Hunger Plan and Generalplan Ost, the Slavic population were to be removed from East-Central Europe through expulsion, enslavement, starvation, and extermination.[5] The Nazis eventually decided to exterminate the Poles and most other Slavic people, except for a small percentage of people living in Eastern Europe who were deemed to be non-Slavic descendants of Germanic settlers, and thus subjects for Germanisation.[6]

The Übermensch (German) (EnglishOverman or Superman) is a concept in the philosophy ofGermanphilosopherFriedrich Nietzsche—he posited the Übermensch as a goal for humanity to set for itself in his 1883 book Thus Spoke Zarathustra (German: Also Sprach Zarathustra). However, Nietzsche never developed the concept on racial grounds; the philosopher was not racist (nor an anti-semite). Instead, the Übermensch "seems to be the ideal aim of spiritual development more than a biological goal."[7] Nazism distorted the real meaning behind the concept to fit its 'master race' view.

Mendelian genetics was rediscovered in 1900, providing the basis of the genetic inheritance maps used by Nazi eugenicists to identify persons of the Jewish race. In relation to models of inheritance, race is treated by Nazi eugenicists not as a single gene inherited in a mendelian fashion, and is not based upon mendelian inheritance.

By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was posited that the Indo-Europeans (then generally also referred to as Aryans) made up the highest branch of humanity because their civilization was the most technologically advanced. This reasoning simultaneously intertwined with Nordicism which proclaimed the "Nordic race" as the "purest" form of said Aryan race. Today, this view is regarded as scientific racism because it contradicts racial equality by positing that one race is superior to all other races.

In attempting to scientifically prove the racial inferiority of Slavs, German (and Austrian) racial scientists were forced to gloss over their findings which consistently found that Early Slavs were dolicocephalic and fair haired, i.e., "Nordic", while the South Slavic "Dinaric" sub-race was often viewed favourable.[16] Nazis used the term "Slavic race", and considered Slavs to be non-Aryan[17][18][19][20][21] The concept of a Slavic "Untermensch" went alongside the political goals, and was particularly aimed at Poles and Russians. Germany's ultimate goal was to realize their Drang nach Osten to conquer in Europe, Ukraine's "chernozem" (black earth) soil being a particularly desirable zone for colonization by the "Herrenvolk" (master race).

In relation to the Nazis racial purity, author and historian Lucy Dawidowicz wrote:

In the hierarchy of Nazi racism, the "Aryans" were the superior race, destined to rule the world after the destruction of their racial arch-foe, the Jews. The lesser races over whom the Germans would rule included the Slavs — Poles, Russians, Ukrainians. ... Hitler's racial policy with regard to the Slavs, to the extent that it was formulated, was "depopulation." The Slavs were to be prevented from procreating, except to provide the necessary continuing supply of slave laborers."[22]

There has been in Virginia as earnest a desire to abolish slavery as exists any where at this day. It commenced with the Revolution, and many of our ablest and most influential men were active in recommending it, and in devising plans for the accomplishment of it. The Legislature encouraged and facilitated emancipation by the owners, and many slaves were so emancipated. The leaning of the courts of justice was always in favorem libertatis. This disposition continued until the impracticability of effecting a general emancipation, without incalculable mischief to the master race, and danger of utter destruction to the other, and the evils consequent on partial emancipations, became too obvious to the Legislature, and to the great majority of the people, to be longer disregarded.[23]

For these great ends hath Heaven’s supreme command
Brought the black savage from his native land,
Trains for each purpose his barbarian mind,
By slavery tamed, enlightened, and refined;
Instructs him, from a master-race, to draw
Wise modes of polity and forms of law,
Imbues his soul with faith, his heart with love,
Shapes all his life by dictates from above

where the phrase denotes the relation between the white masters and negro slaves. By 1860 Virginian author George Fitzhugh was using the "challenging phrase "master race", which soon came to mean considerably more than the ordinary master-slave relationship".[24] Fitzhugh, along with a number of southern writers, used the term to differentiate Southerners from Northerners, based on the dichotomy that Southerners were supposedly descendents of Normans / Cavaliers whereas Northerners were descendents of Anglo-Saxons / Puritans.[25]

In 1861, the Southern press bragged that Northern soldiers would "encounter a master race" and knowledge of this fact would cause Northern soldiers' "knees to tremble".[26] The Richmond Whig in 1862 proclaimed that "the master race of this continent is found in the southern states",[27] and in 1863 the Richmond Examiner stated that "there are slave races born to serve, master races born to govern"[28]

In the works of John H. Van Evrie, a Northern supporter of the Confederacy, the term was interchangeable with white supremacy, notably in White Supremacy and Negro Subordination, Or, Negroes a Subordinate Race and (so-called) slavery its normal condition (1861). In Subgeneation: the theory of the normal relations of the races; an answer to miscegenation (1864) Van Evrie created the words "subgen" to describe what he considered to be the "inferior races" and "subgeneation" to describe the ‘normal’ relation of such inferior races to whites, something which he considered to be the "very corner-stone of democracy";[29] but these words never entered the dictionary.

The origins of the Nazi version of the theory of the master race were in 19th-century racial theories of Count Joseph Arthur De Gobineau, who argued that cultures degenerated when distinct races mixed. It was believed at this time that Southern European peoples were racially mixed with non-European Moors from across the Mediterranean Sea, while Northern Europeans and Western Europeans remained pure. Proponents of Nordic theory further argued that Nordic peoples had developed innate toughness and determination due to the harsh, challenging climate in which they evolved.

The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer was one of the earliest proponents of a theory presenting a hierarchical racial model of history, attributing civilisational primacy to the "white races" who gained their sensitivity and intelligence by refinement in the rigorous north.

The highest civilisation and culture, apart from the Ancient Indians and Egyptians, are found exclusively among the white races; and even with many dark peoples, the ruling caste or race is fairer in colour than the rest and has, therefore, evidently immigrated, for example, the Brahmins, the Incas, and the rulers of the South Sea Islands. All this is because necessity is the mother of invention because those tribes that emigrated early to the north and there gradually became white, had to develop all their intellectual powers and invent and perfect all the arts in their struggle with need, want and misery, which in their many forms were brought about by the climate. This they had to do in order to make up for the parsimony of nature and out of it all came their high civilisation.[30]

Despite this, he was adamantly against differing treatment of races, was fervently anti-slavery, and supported the abolitionist movement in the United States. He describes the treatment of "[our] innocent black brothers whom force and injustice have delivered into [the slave-master's] devilish clutches" as "belonging to the blackest pages of mankind's criminal record".[31]

Werner Goldberg, who was of half Jewish ancestry or Mischling in Nazi terminology, who was blond and blue-eyed, was used in Nazi recruitment posters as "The Ideal German Soldier."

Nazi racial theorist Hans F. K. Günther first defined "Nordic thought" in his programmatic book Der Nordische Gedanke unter den Deutschen. That Germans were not purely Nordic was indeed acknowledged by Günther in his book Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes (1922) ("Racial Science of the German People"), where Günther recognized Germans as being composed of five Aryan subtype races: Nordic, Mediterranean, Dinaric, Alpine, and East Baltic, while asserting that the Nordics were the highest in a racial hierarchy of the five subtypes.[35] Most official Nazi comments on the Nordic race were based on Günther's works, and Alfred Rosenberg presented Günther with a medal for his work in anthropology.

Although the physical ideal of these racial theorists was typically the tall, fair-haired and light-eyed Nordic individual, such theorists accepted that considerable variety of hair and eye colour existed within the racial categories they recognised. For example, Adolf Hitler and many Nazi officials had dark hair and were still considered to be members of the Aryan race under Nazi racial doctrine, as the determination of racial type depended on a preponderance of many characteristics in an individual rather than on one defining feature.[36]

Hitler and Himmler planned to use the SS as the basis for the racial "regeneration" of Europe following the final victory of Nazism. The SS was to be a racial elite chosen on the basis of "pure" Nordic qualities.[37][38][39]

Giuseppe Sergi (1841–1936) was an Italian anthropologist of the early twentieth century, best known for his opposition to Nordicism in his books on the racial identity of ancient Mediterranean peoples. His concept of the Mediterranean race became important to the modelling of racial difference in the early twentieth century.

Goebbels personally selected Hessy Levinsons Taft, a young Jewish baby, to show the "ideal Aryan baby" in Nazi propaganda. He was unaware of her ancestry. (ca. 1935)

In Nazi Germany, the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935 forbid sexual relations and marriage between an "Aryan" and a "non-Aryan" in order to maintain the purity of the Aryan race. Such relations became a punishable crime as Rassenschande or "racial shame".[42] The League of German Girls was particularly regarded as instructing girls to avoid Rassenschande, which was treated with particular importance for young females.[43] Aryans found guilty could face incarceration in a concentration camp, while non-Aryans could face the death penalty.[44] The Nazis recognized the Germanic people as the master race, several methods were made also to improve and maintain the Germanic-Nordic ubermenschen Aryan "master race", eugenics was practiced. In order to eliminate "defective" citizens, the T-4 Euthanasia Program was administered by Karl Brandt to rid the country of the intellectually disabled or those born with genetic deficiencies, as well as those deemed to be racially inferior. Additionally, a programme of compulsory sterilisation was undertaken which resulted in the forced operations of hundreds of thousands of individuals. Many of these policies are generally seen as being related to what eventually became known as the Holocaust.[6]

The Nazis also took measures to increase the number of Nordics in Germany. The Lebensborn program was only open to German women who fitted the Nordic profile. During the Nazi occupation of Poland, the Nazis took young Nordic-looking Polish children who were classified as being descended of ethnic German settlers to check whether or not they were "racially valuable". Were that the case, the young children were taken back to these Lebensborn houses so they could be raised as Germans.[45]

In Nazi Germany there existed an official document, which certified its owner to be Aryan, the so-called Aryan certificate that could be obtained by citizens of other countries. It states in the section Racial Tenet (Rassegrundsatz):

"In line with national socialist thinking which does full justice to all other peoples, there is never the expression of superior or inferior, but alien racial admixtures.[46]"

For the Greater Aryan certificate people had to prove that reaching back to January 1, 1800 "none of their paternal nor their maternal ancestors had Jewish or colored blood"[47] (SS officers had to prove this reaching back to 1750).

The fact that the Mediterranean race is responsible for the most important of ancient western civilisations was a problem for the promoters of Nordic superiority. According to Giuseppe Sergi, the Mediterranean race was the "greatest race of the world" and was singularly responsible for the most accomplished civilisations of ancient times, including those of Mesopotamia, Persia, Egypt, Greece, Phoenicia, Carthage, and Rome. The Mediterranean race was also a major influence to the outside world in the modern era: Portugal established the first global empire in history, during the 16th century, followed contemporary by Spain, setting both nations in the highest dominion of political and economics powers in Europe. Portugal and Spain are also responsible for being the first nations in discovering and colonising the Americas by its conquistadors.

C. G. Seligman also stated that "it must, I think, be recognised that the Mediterranean race has actually more achievements to its credit than any other race, since it is responsible for by far the greater part of Mediterranean civilisation, certainly before 1000 BC (and probably much later), and so shaped not only the Aegean cultures, but those of Western as well as the greater part of Eastern Mediterranean lands, while the culture of their near relatives, the Hamitic pre-dynastic Egyptians, formed the basis of that of Egypt."[48]

In the 1930s, both educational and storybooks for children in Germany taught their readers about the master race. In the Sun Koh science fiction series where Koh says things like "My forefathers were Aryan". In a story about Atlantis, Koh says, "If our Atlantis once again rises out of the sea, then we will get from there the blond, steel-hard men with the pure blood and will create with them the master race, which will finally rule the earth."[50] The German writer Michael Ende, who was born in 1929 and grew up with such books, in the 1950s, wrote his classic novel Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver as a way of opposing the Nazi propaganda he was taught. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writer Julia Voss wrote a book[note 1] on Jim Button, uncovering the Ende's many references to Nazi symbols.[51] Voss shows how Ende upends the Nazi belief that Atlantis was the original home of the Aryan race by creating his own submerged city and making it rise, but not restore Aryan master-race rule over the earth, rather it becomes a multi-racial paradise with Jim Button, who is black, as its king.[50]

In the 1948 film Rope by Alfred Hitchcock, one of the central characters, Brandon Shaw, is a firm believer in the master race ideology.

In Doctor Who, the Doctor's frequent enemies, the Daleks, consider themselves a master race who must purge the universe of all others; Terry Nation explicitly modeled them on the Nazis.[52] In the 2009 special The End of Time, when the Master transforms the entire human race into copies of himself, he claims that there is no human race, but only "the Master race".

In the Harry Potter series, while the parallels were not originally intentional, there is much similarity between Voldemort's Pureblood ideology and the Master Race ideology of the Nazis, with wizards being "pure" and anyone with Muggle (non-wizard) blood being considered "half-blood" or "mudblood", a word treated the way a racial slur would be treated in the real world (Neo-Nazis call non-white people mud people).[53]

^Margaret Sanger, quoted in Katz, Esther; Engelman, Peter (2002). The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. p. 319. ISBN978-0-252-02737-6. Our...campaign for Birth Control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical in ideal with the final aims of Eugenics

^Fischel, Jack R. (2010). Historical Dictionary of the Holocaust. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. p. 175. ISBN978-0-8108-7485-5. The policy of Lebensraum was also the product of Nazi racial ideology, which held that the Slavic peoples of the east were inferior to the Aryan race.

^Timm, Annette F. (2010). The Politics of Fertility in Twentieth-Century Berlin. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 118. ISBN978-0-521-19539-3. The Nazis' singleminded desire to "purify" the German race through the elimination of non-Aryans (particularly Jews, Gypsies, and Slavs)

^"The range of blond hair color in pure Nordic peoples runs from flaxen and red to shades of chestnut and brown... It must be clearly understood that blondness of hair and of eye is not a final test of Nordic race. The Nordics include all the blonds, and also those of darker hair or eye when possessed of a preponderance of other Nordic characters. In this sense the word "blond" means those lighter shades of hair or eye color in contrast to the very dark or black shades which are termed brunet. The meaning of "blond" as now used is therefore not limited to the lighter or flaxen shades as in colloquial speech. In England among Nordic populations there are large numbers of individuals with hazel brown eyes joined with the light brown or chestnut hair which is the typical hair shade of the English and Americans. This combination is also common in Holland and Westphalia and is frequently associated with a very fair skin. These men are all of "blond" aspect and constitution and consequently are to be classed as members of the Nordic race." Quoted in Grant, 1922, p. 26.